Voting rights get bipartisan boost

8:59 AM,
Jan. 21, 2014

Written by

DeWayne Wickham
USA TODAY

Four days before the nation celebrated the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 85th birthday, a small, bipartisan group of congressmen offered the slain civil rights leader - and this country - an unexpected gift.

This surprising mix of Republicans and Democrats introduced a bill to fix much of the damage the Supreme Court did last year to the Voting Rights Act, which was born of a voter registration drive that King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference launched in 1965 in Selma, Ala. In June, the top court struck down a portion of the nearly 50-year-old law that required states with a history ...